Even though he helped design games like Unreal and Unreal Tournament (as well as Jazz Jackrabbit), Cliff Bleszinski became known to the big public for his work as Lead Designer on the Gears of War trilogy.

After Gears of War 3, though, Bleszinski decided to leave the games industry altogether after twenty years of working with Epic Games. Less than two years later, he came back by founding indie developer Boss Key Productions based in Raleigh, North Carolina; the team is now working on arena first person shooter LawBreakers, which we previewed at E3 2016.

Of course, as his most popular creation the Gears of War series went on without him. Gears of War: Judgment was the last franchise entry developed by Epic Games, which then decided to sell the IP to Microsoft on January 27th, 2014; no figure was ever officially revealed, though industry analyst Michael Pachter surmised that Microsoft paid $100m or less for a franchise that had already grossed over $1B at the time.

Microsoft then assembled a team in Vancouver, BC to work specifically on the Gears of War series. First named Black Tusk Studios and then renamed The Coalition, they’ve been working on Gears of War 4, which is set twenty-five years after the events of the previous game and focuses on JD Fenix, the son of former protagonist Marcus Fenix (who is always in the game, anyway).

As you all know by now, the game will be out on October 11th for Windows PC and Xbox One though the Ultimate Edition allows early access starting from October 7th. Of course, Cliff Bleszinski got his hands on it already and he started giving some impressions via Twitter: he praised the game’s “brilliant” prologue as well as highlighting particle effects, the double shotgun weapon and the new DeeBees enemies.

Enjoying #GearsofWar4 so far! That double shotgun is fun AF. Deebies surprisingly fun to fight and good combat bowls. Great particle FX too.